Comfort

Say! You’ve struck a heap of trouble⁠—
Bust in business, lost your wife;
No one cares a cent about you,
You don’t care a cent for life;
Hard luck has of hope bereft you,
Health is failing, wish you’d die⁠—
Why, you’ve still the sunshine left you,
And the big, blue sky.

Sky so blue it makes you wonder
If it’s heaven shining through;
Earth so smiling ’way out yonder,
Sun so bright it dazzles you;
Birds a-singing, flowers a-flinging
All their fragrance on the breeze;
Dancing shadows, green, still meadows⁠—
Don’t you mope, you’ve still got these.

These, and none can take them from you;
These, and none can weigh their worth.
What! you’re tired and broke and beaten?⁠—
Why, you’re rich⁠—you’ve got the earth!
Yes, if you’re a tramp in tatters,
While the blue sky bends above,
You’ve got nearly all that matters,
You’ve got God, and God is love.

Where this text comes from

First published in Songs of a Sourdough (1907). First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established. [1]

Structure read from the source's markup; the words have not been compared against a page scan. Last checked 2026-08-20.

Taken from Standard Ebooks, standardebooks/robert-w-service_songs-of-a-sourdough, poetry.xhtml. Rights: public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931).

Earlier sources (2)

This poem as JSON or plain text. Line anchors #L1–#L24.

Cite this poem

Robert W. Service (1874–1958). “Comfort.” First published in Songs of a Sourdough (1907). Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/robert-w-service/comfort/. Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.

More by Robert W. Service